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PRICE, 25 CENTS. 
P KI I T, I II I If I iuy I t 






T II E 



E E L A T IONS H E T AV E E N 



CAPITAL AND LABOR 



IX THE 



UXITED STATES 



JOSEPH NASH. 



THE FIRST-PRIZE ESSAY AWARDED BY THE BOSTOX YOUNG KEN'S 
CHRISTIAN UNION, 1878 



BOSTON: 
LEE AND SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS. 

1878. 



Pre>= of Rockwell & Churchill. "9 Arch St. 



THE 



RELATIONS BETWEEN 



CAPITAL AND LABOR 



IN THE 



UNITED STATES. 



B V 

JOSEPH NASH 



THE EIRST-PRIZE ESSAY AWARDED BY THE BOSTON YOUNG MEN'S 
CHRISTIAN UNION, 1878. 



r 



65.00 .v ? 

* j 

* / 

BOSTON: 

LEE AND SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS, 

1878. 



fr 



CAPITAL AND LABOR. 

PRIZE ESSAYS ON THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THEM OFFERED BY THE 

CHRISTIAN UNION. 

It was publicly proposed, a few months since, to offer to members 
of the Young Men's Christian Union, not more than thirty-five 
years of age, prizes of fifty and twenty-five dollars, to be paid out 
of a special fund contributed for the purpose, for the two best essays 
on " The Relations between Capital and Labor in the United States." 
The announcement stated that " essays are to be signed with fic- 
titious names, and accompanied by a sealed envelope containing the 
real and the fictitious names of the writer. Eminent men will be 
selected as judges. It is expected that the successful essays will 
be made public in the Union building, or in some other manner. 
It is hoped that this will be the means of interesting many young 
men in, and inducing them to give serious thoughts to, this most 
important social question." 

Much interest was manifested in the above proposition, many 
young men responding by preparing essays. General F. A. 
Osborn, Professor William P. Atkinson, and Samuel Wells, Esq. 
kindly consented to act as judges, and have devoted much time to 
the careful examination of the essays. From the judges the 
following decision has been received : — 

Boston, February 7, 1878. 

William H. Baldwin, Esq., President of the Young Men's Christian 
Union : — 

Dear Sir, — The committee to whom was referred the examination of the 
essays written by members of the Union on the subject of " The Eelations 
between Capital and Labor in the United States," beg leave to report that 
they have carefully read the essays, which numbered seventeen in all, and are 
much gratified in finding that they exhibit evidence of considerable study and 
investigation, and also show that the ideas of the writers are generally sound 
and correct. 



They unanimously recommend that the first prize be awarded to the writer 
of the essay marked "Themis;" the second to the writer of that marked 
"Junius, 1728; " and are pleased to be able to name for honorable mention 
the three essays respectively marked "Alleyn E.," "A Job Printer," and 
" Junius." 

FRANCIS A. OSBORN, 

VT. P. ATKINSON, 
SAMUEL WELLS. 

The sealed envelopes, containing the real names of the writers, 
were opened Monday evening, February 11. "Themis" (first 
prize) was found to be by Joseph Nash, Boston ; M Junius, 1728 " 
(second prize), was by John A. Bennett. Names for "honorable 
mention" : " Alleyn E.," F. A. Varney ; " A Job Printer," Henry 
A. Kidder ; " Junius," Henry J. Bowen. 

Detached parts of this essay were read at the Union Hall, 
Boylston street, on February 18, 1878, which the Boston press 
characterized as "strong, suggestive, and original in style." 



Wyz Boston gotmrj JHen's Gftjtffstfan ®taum 

THIS ESSAY IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED, AS A SLIGHT TOKEN OF 
RECOGNITION OF THE PRACTICAL CHRISTIAN WORK IT IS 

DOING FOR THE YOUNG MEN IN THE CITY OF 

• 

BOSTON, AND AT WHOSE INSTANCE 
IT WAS WRITTEN. 



THE KELATIONS BETWEEN CAPITAL AND LABOK IN 
THE UNITED STATES. 



We cannot regard but with solicitude, if not with alarm, 
the recent, violent and riotous events in the history and 
progress of labor in the United States. It is a new phase 
in our social order, that has for us, our country, and its 
institutions, a more than ordinary significance. Our civili- 
zation, in its political form, has been built of forces that 
are peculiar to itself. They give it certain elements of 
strength and weakness not to be found in the modern 
civilizations of continental Europe, which possess, in other 
respects, like characteristics ; being developed and unfolded 
by the same expanding powers of religious rule, scientific 
discovery, intellectual growth, and economic prosperity. 

Our government is made up of the people, by the people, 
and for the people. Whatever irritates and distracts any 
considerable number of its citizens comes close and quick 
in its sensitive pulsation to the heart and strength of our 
national life. With us government and people are synony- 
mous terms. Like the brain and the body, they are bound 
together by innumerable and delicate nerves. Does the one 
suffer, then the pain is speedily communicated to every part 
of the body politic. We have no strong, conservative and 
centralized force that stands apart by itself, governed by a 
special sovereignty, and controlled by a limited authority, in 
the maintenance of public peace and order. Do the people 
strike at the government and the civil rule, then they fall. 



8 



We have no soldiers enlisted in their defence but them ; no 
coercive power for municipal order and national unity but 
what they voluntarily contribute. Do the people make the 
assault upon our institutions, then Caesar has fallen by the 
hand of his bosom-friend Brutus. 

It would seem, then, that under such circumstances 
we must make some satisfactory solution of this difficult 
problem of capital and labor ; that we must find some 
remedy for the disease, discover some palliative to sooth 
and allay its inflammation ; for, should it continue to increase 
in its maddened intensity and purpose, who will set the 
bounds to what it may destroy, who limit the extent of the 
upheaval and change it may produce, in the present social 
order and political system of the government of the United 
States ? 

For labor to raise its rebellious hand in this country and 
under this government, formed in its deepest interests, and 
fashioned to its special needs, seems to us like the hand of 
an evil son raised to strike down the venerated father 
whose first care and thought were his welfare, success, and 
happiness. Well may we ask the question, if capital and 
labor cannot be united and harmonious under institutions 
and laws like ours, in a country so advantageous to their 
growth and increase as this, where is the land, or what 
the political system, under which this desirable result can be 
attained ? 

But, regret this recent trouble between capital and labor 
as we may, it has its lessons. The learning of them will 
form a kind of crisis in our national thought. Among other 
things, the struggle teaches us that the economic laws make 
no distinctions in nations or governments, in their rule and 
application. America has freedom and equality. She has 
millions of acres of rich and fertile soil yet uncultivated, 
exhaustless treasures of material prosperity yet untouched. 



9 



But labor riots here as well as in the most autocratic and 
imperial governments of Europe, where every acre of land 
is occupied, and every natural force pressed into the service 
for the accumulation of wealth, to minister to man's wants, 
necessities, and comforts. The economic laws are universal 
in their rule and sovereignty. They are confined to no 
nation or country in their jurisdiction. Disregard them in 
republic or monarchy, and the penalty is sure to follow. 

As a people we are energetic and active. We hurry 
along, with a feverish intensity, in the pursuit of wealth and 
pleasure. We are not given to the study of causes. We 
are interested only in effects and events. We catch at the 
nearest way. We leap into the swiftest current, never 
thinking that in the fact of its swiftness lies the probability 
of a Niagara, near at hand, over which we may be hurled. 
We never anticipate or think of peril. The vessel sails 
under full canvas till she runs ashore ; then we look about 
us for the why and the wherefore. 

While we are not insensible to danger or misfortune, yet 
we require a strong electrical shock, such as this one of 
capital and labor has been, to set our reflective faculties in 
motion. If we heed the warning, it may serve a good and 
noble purpose in pointing out the way we may escape more 
fatal errors in the future. 

The relations between capital and labor in the United 
States may have some few special and exclusive condi- 
tions that are only to be found in this country. They may 
consist in its climate, form of government, legislative policy, 
geographical position, or in some particular or material 
advantage which nature has bestowed upon the United 
States to the exclusion of all other countries. Each and all 
of these are important subjects of inquiry that bear more or 
less directly upon this controversy. But the greater impor- 
tance of this question rests here, as elsewhere, in the 



10 



analysis and consideration of the laws and forces that are 
universal in their application to the production of the cap- 
ital and the remuneration of labor. All civilized communi- 
ties have here a common cause, a common difficulty to 
encounter, a common obstacle to overcome. 

The- great capitals of nations and the markets of the 
world have been brought close to each other bv the means 
of the telegraph. So rapid, facilitated, and frequent has 
become the communication, by the railway and the steam- 
ship, of the most distant parts of the world with each other, 
that all nations seem bound and linked together in a common 
brotherhood and purpose. No nation can long enjoy profit 
and advantages in which others do not soon participate. Xo 
country can suffer in the decline of its production and trade, 
or adopt artificial obstructions to exchange and intercourse, 
that will not be quickly felt by all with which it trades. The 
blow acts and rea ts. It either intentionally or ignorantlv 
hits the mark before it. but it often rebounds and comes 
back with a double force to -trike the hand that sent it. 
This economic inter st s ms to be one of the silent and 
almost inscrutable ways of Divine Providence to raise all the 
nations of the world to a common level, in which they shall 
share their mutual bene tits and privileges, whether they 
would or no. 

Not only every country, but every age and cycle of time 
have characteristics of thought, manner, and work that dis- 
tinguish them from all others. There are local influen 
such as belong to the community, government, or nation, 
that we can comprehend, gi sp, and measure, with some 

;ree of certainty and truth. But there are also world 
influences, that, like huge levers, lift all the civilized race- 
a miit. and fashion all they touch to one universal mould. 
The force and direction of these influences we cannot always 
understand and predict. We cannot sufficiently separate 



11 



ourselves from the all-pervading interests and prejudices 
that surround us to dispassionately consider and analyze 
them. What is the blessing of one age we denounce as the 
curse of the next. We run with no sight of the goal. We 
fall over a precipice, or land in a garden of roses. 

This wide-extending influence we hold to be especially 
true of labor in the present century. Within the last fifty 
years there have been great changes and rapid strides in 
the social and material world. There have been great dis- 
coveries and marvellous inventions, that have almost anni- 
hilated space and time. But probably in no single phase 
has the change been greater than in the condition and cir- 
"cumstances of labor. This change in labor, in a large 
measure, has grown out of this new order. This new and 
increased application of the*latent forces of nature to these 
powerful and wondrous constructions of mechanisms have 
made for it in the United States, as elsewhere, a new era 
and a new existence. 

In this change man has been largely separated from the 
soil. Everything like dependent servitude has been zeal- 
ously fought and largely overcome. Man's life, it is true, 
has become more independent, but often more responsible 
and precarious, in proportion as it has attained this end. 
The gaining of liberty often means the loss of bread. 
He has been drawn from agriculture to manufactures and 
commerce. At the beginning of the present century 
seven-eighths of the population of the United States was 
rural and engaged in farming. The last census showed that 
the balance is now as greatly against agricultural labor, as 
it was seventy or eighty years ago in its favor. Now, not 
more than one in seven of the people is .so employed. In 
England the change has been still greater. Only three 
millions of her entire population gain their living by culti- 
vating the soil, while she must annually import cereals to 



12 



feed ten millions of her population. She expends yearly 
more than a hundred and fifty millions of pounds sterling 
for this purpose. About fifty per cent, of the population of 
France is still attached to the soil. England, it is true, 
under the present system of the division of her landed 
estates, cannot become an extensive agricultural country. 

Under this new regime new trades and employments have 
sprung up r requiring special and skilful training, which 
when once acquired are seldom abandoned. There have 
been multiplied divisions of labor, having a special type and 
character. Each attracts unto itself its several artisans, 
who have attained a proficiency and celerity in its perform- 
ance that they have in no other. The general character of 
labor, such as our forefathers pose - d in settling the Xew 
World, has become special. Doubtless, in the new quality of 
labor, irrespective of machinery, the facility and capacity 
of production have been greatly increased. A few men now 
can do the work of a hundred of a century ago. The loom 
and the spindle have built up large towns and cities that 
but for their invention would never have existed. Machinery 
and commerce have brought within the attainment of the 
lower orders of society* articles of consumption, comfort, 
and adornment, that two centuries ago a queen or a duchess 
could not have commanded. Queen Elizabeth dined on 
roast beef and beer : potatoes at the table of King James I. 
were a luxury ; and the humblest citizen can now read by a 
light that royal eyes could not then enjoy. 

It is out of this new order of the classifications and asso- 
ciations of labor, this ease and quickness of communication, 
'that the trade-unions have had their origin, and derived their 
cooperation and unity. This vivid and strong contrast in 
the conditions of capital and labor, the employer and the 
employe, has been greatly intensified. Each has been 
amassed in greater quantities, and they have been brought 



13 



in "direct contact, where they were formerly more widely dif- 
fused. These new conditions have given a renewed impulse 
to the intensity of this modern antagonism between capital 
and labor. In this highly attained rapidity and cheapness 
of jDroduction, by these trained bands and classes of work- 
men, nations are rivalling each other in the race for wealth. 
It is out of this great economic saving of labor that the 
present order of civilization, in no small measure, owes its 
prosperity, power, and glory; its boasted superiority over 
those that have preceded it. 

Whence arises this industrial conflict between capital and 
labor? Volumes have been written, commissions appointed, 
associations formed, courts organized, to answer this question ; 
yet strikes continue, trade-unions multiply and increase, and 
labor grows more discontented, factious, and rebellious. It 
is not the few thinkers and writers who will settle this con- 
troversy, while the laboring classes are left in neglect and 
ignorance. It is not a burden that the few can sustain ; but 
one where each member of society must press forward to 
bear an intelligent, human, and Christian part, or it falls to 
the ground. 

A Christian humanity, an intelligent understanding of the 
primary laws of the science of political economy, or the 
science of the accumulation of wealth, we believe to be both 
involved in the relations between capital and labor in the 
United States. Whatever tends to the production of capital, 
the decrease in the supply and competition of labor, or to the 
contentment of labor in its present status, are lines of investiga- 
tion that go directly to the deepest interests of this important 
controversy. Labor is entirely ignorant of the economic laws 
that govern and control the conditions by which it is 
remunerated. Capital is often hard, exclusive, and unsym- 
pathetic. The crystallization of society in its social form is, 
perhaps, one of the inevitable tendencies of time and human 



14 



nature. Government sometimes assists, but cannot always 
resist, this influence. Often, like the atmosphere we breathe, 
we are unconscious of its existence. Societies, that have 
passed through many ages of opulence and wealth, naturally 
tend to autocratic assumptions of superiority and class dis- 
tinctions. These often make labor feel that somehow it is 
disgraced and humiliated, with a curse upon its brow that it 
has done nothing to incur. 

We cannot deny it, regret it as we may, that money in the 
United States is becoming the general basis of our social 
orders. It has here a boundless power and significance, 
that is, perhaps, to be found in no other order of civilization 
of modern times. Railway and other corporations can buy 
everything with their check-books, even, it would seem, 
almost the government itself. Large accumulations of wealth, 
that, under the direction of enterprise, integrity, and humanity, 
are the greatest blessings to the community and the State, 
are frequently becoming, by a sad perversion of the best 
objects and purposes of money, to be a great curse and mis- 
fortune. Unfortunately, by many it seems only the means 
to gratify a tinsel vanity and a hollow ambition. We, can 
close our eyes to this fact and tendency, but they neverthe- 
less exist. We can close our eyes to the sun, but that does 
not make the sun the less. 

Labor does not, however, demand of capital an equality in 
a social sense. This is not the grievance of labor against 
capital. It is a humane interest and kindness that it seeks 
in its struggle, irrespective of the wages, be they high or 
low, by which it is remunerated. Labor wishes to be 
treated like flesh and blood, and not like a machine, to which 
political economy limits and prescribes it. And here we 
think it is that a solution of this problem, wholly b} r the 
science of political economy, will still leave much that is 
irritating and unsatisfactory. Human nature, in its essential 



15 



characteristics and repeated phenomena, we believe to be 
no less a science than political economy. Whoever attempts 
to solve any problem directly connected with its passional 
life, that does not make it the form, if not the basis, of what 
would be demonstrated, is reckoning without his host. 
Political economy can do much, but it cannot do all, to bring 
capital and labor to a just, thorough, and intelligent under- 
standing of each other. 

The fate of the laboring man in regard to the amount of 
wages he shall receive hangs suspended between two 
causes, — that which produces capital, and that which re- 
duces the competition of labor. Wages is but a relative 
term to the cost of living. Money wages may be high, yet 
of no advantage to the laborer. The proportionate expense 
of what he consumes may be so great that at the end of 
the week he has nothing to save out of his earnings. The 
cheapness of an article of necessity or luxury depends upon 
the number engaged in its production, the facility by which 
it can be produced at the least possible application of labor, 
and the demand for its consumption. 

The ancient Greek laborer received nineteen cents per 
day. Yet, when a day's labor could buy a sheep, and six 
days' labor an ox, he was receiving comparatively high 
wages, to the laborer who gets two dollars per day, and a 
sheep costs him four dollars, and an ox twenty dollars. 
When sheep can be purchased at so small a sum there must 
be many engaged in their production, when compared to 
the demand for their consumption. At this price of meat 
the laborer could have his table bountifully supplied while 
earning the miserable daily stipend of nineteen cents. We 
know that there are many laborers of the present day, in 
continental Europe, who can earn three or four times this 
amount, yet rarely see meat upon their table. And we have 
no doubt that meat presses hard upon the wages of many a 



16 

day-laborer in America. We fear that it will press harder 
in the future than it has in the past. 

In the consideration of the wages that labor gets there 
are always two things to be considered : what it positively 
receives, and what it costs it to live. The economic sword 
is never sharpened only on one side. It always has two 
edges. While we follow the course and direction of one of 
those edges, we may be entirely ignorant of the execution 
and havoc that the unseen edge may be doing. As Bastiat, 
the French political economist, has said, "There is always the 
seen and the unseen." The seen is the number of dollars 
that labor is paid ; the unseen is the purchasing power of 
those dollars, in the markets, of necessities and comforts. 
Both of these must always be contrasted and subtracted, 
one from the other, before we can have a just and accurate 
remainder to inform us of the true status of labor, to note 
its advancement or decline. 

When we read that wages are any stated sum, in any 
particular age or country, our lesson is but half learned. 
We must next know how much meat or bread that sum will 
buy, to ascertain if labor is well or ill paid. An historian 
may quote the prices of labor, in different ages and coun- 
tries, to show how much better off it must be in one age 
and country than in others. But this is a very false stand- 
ard. One set of figures in the seen may prove a statement 
that would be an absolute lie in the unseen. We are often 
reminded of this when the different advocates of opposing 
industrial policies make exhibits of figures to maintain their 
different positions. These often may be but half the truth, 
and that the smallest half. It is the telling of a lie by 
omissions and silence. Is England losing in any industrial 
interest, look and see if she is not gaining double the 
amount in some other. Are the United States increasing 
in the business and manufactures of any protected article, 



17 



be ^sure J:hat some other interest, by its loss, decline, or 
contribution, is not more than paying for this increase. 

Writers on political economy are not entirely unanimous 
on the wage-fund theory. Yet it seems to us that they 
substantially arrive at the same end, only differing in the 
ways they come to it. It is evident that capital must have 
its interest, or it will not be invested. The employer or 
the manager must have his wages or profits, or he will not 
work. If labor gets what remains, we cannot possibly see 
how it can obtain any more. The conflict is, perhaps, more 
directly between labor and profits as represented in the 
employer. For labor to deny capital its interest would be 
destroying the means and subsistence by which it exists. 

The wage-fund principle of political economy teaches us 
that the amount of wages that labor will receive, at any 
given time, or place, or in any trade or occupation, is simply 
one of division; that capital is the dividend, the number 
of laborers the divisor, and what remains after the process of 
division is the quotient. There are only two ways to make 
this quotient larger. Increase the dividend, the divisor 
remaining the same, and the quotient will be larger. 
Lessen the divisor, the dividend remaining the same, and 
a like result will be obtained. 

If there is a wage-fund of five hundred dollars, and there 
are one hundred laborers competing for its distribution, the 
result will be that each laborer will receive five dollars. 
But if there are five hundred laborers to be paid out of it 
then each one can only receive a dollar. It is self-evident 
that labor cannot get more than there is. All additions to 
capital, all investments of profits, in an extended and en- 
larged business, mean an increased demand for labor, or a 
higher rate of wages to those engaged. If there are two 
employers and only one laborer then wages will go up. 



18 



But if there are two laborers seeking work of one employer 
then wages will go down. 

In the economic world much which seems to be lost is 
only transferred ; what one has apparently lost, another has 
gained. An investment may be unprofitable, but the money 
that has established it, or has been seemingly sunk and lost, 
has gone to new hands. The railway may return no profits, 
but the wealth that has been expended in its construction 
has begun new enterprises or enlarged those already in 
existence, in the production of wealth and employment of 
labor. The railway failure we see ; but we do not always 
see and follow the new distribution of wealth it has occa- 
sioned, and the silent forces it may have set in motion in the 
industrial world. The spirit of competition, and the cease- 
less, voracious passion of selfishness, which the workman 
generally regards as his most bitter foe and relentless 
destroyer, are really his truest friends and most steadfast 
protectors. They are the heart of the great business world, 
the centre around which it revolves. They dispense light 
and warmth to the farthest parts of the world. Were it 
not for competition then capital would oppress and grind 
labor to the barest verge of subsistence, as the meanness 
or avarice of the employer might dictate. There would be 
no power to relieve it from its miserable and unfortunate 
condition. Were it not for selfishness, acting true to its 
grasping and covetous nature, then profits would cease to go 
to capital, enterprise would be abandoned, and business of 
all kinds would fall into decline and ruin. The laborer, 
finding nothing he could do for his support, would either 
have to starve or return to a state of semi-barbarism. 

Labor is interested in the high rates of profits as much 
if not more than capital itself. These profits will again 
return to capital to increase the wage -fund to make higher 
wages, or to give employment to those pressing forward to 



19 



enter the industrial pursuits. Here, if the laborer would 
cast his bread upon the waters, in the form of low wages, to 
increase profits, he will receive it back again in an enlarged 
capital. But it is also equally true that capital is interested 
in high wages, for through an increased consumption they 
will as inevitably find their way back to enlarge business 
and increase profits. 

It is difficult for labor to understand and accept this law 
of supply and demand, this process of division, in determin- 
ing the amount of wages it shall receive. It ascribes wages 
to the generosity or avarice of the employer. The laborer 
works hard and long, in the most disagreeable and life- 
destroyiug occupations, only to earn a scanty and beggarly 
subsistence. He sees his employer and the capitalist living 
in ease and luxury, engaging only in such tasks as taste or 
fancy may dictate. His judgment moves slow and reluc- 
tantly to a conclusion his feelings and his passions are so 
strong against, with apparently much reason on his side. 
He has no faith in the economic theory. The science of 
political economy to him is but a concerted conspiracy, con- 
tinued from age to age in the interest of capital, to defraud 
labor of its just reward and honest remuneration. 

But history shows us that wherever labor has been scarce 
then wages have always been high. In the reign of King 
Edward the Third the whole of England was afflicted with a 
plague of uncommon severity, and the people died in large 
numbers. Immediately after this event wages began to rise, 
and it was found necessary for legislation to interfere to 
regulate the price of labor. When the Puritans and the 
early settlers began to cultivate the New World, wages were 
high, and it was almost impossible to obtain workmen at any 
price. Governor Winthrop says in his journal that a labor- 
ing man could earn as much in three days as would keep 
him the seven. The merchants of the colony of Massa- 



20 



chusetts Bay said they could better afford to pay the English 
manufacturers two hundred per cent, profit than to manu- 
facture for themselves, so high was the price of labor. Here 
again the legislative authority of the colony interceded and 
fixed the sum that labor should receive, attaching a penalty 
to both the employer and employe who broke it. But if it 
is right, just, and wise, for parliaments and legislatures to 
fix the price of labor when it is scarce, then there are cer- 
tainly the same reasons why labor should have the benefit of 
I _:slation when labor is plenty and wages low. But, 
doubtless, the best policy for governments to pur- not 

to prescribe any industrial laws between capital and labor. 

It has been truly said that they who would find truth 
must dig deep. The stones lie upon the surface, but the 
- re is deep down in nature's storehouses. There 
is much in the science of political economy that is in direct 
contradiction to whs _ eral opinion, popular belief, and 
superficial 3 [ration have formed of it. To throw aside 
se errors 1 - patience and diligence. This true and 

not this false instruction must be brought home to the door 
and threshold of labor. 

Let us pause a moment to see how this law of supply and 
demand operates. Suppose there is a community of five 
thousand individuals, — three thousand are rich and two thou- 
sand are poor. The three thousand who are rich have meat ; 
the two thousand who are poor cannot obtain it. The sup- 
ply of meat is limited to three thousand pounds. The rich, 
being moved by humanity, gives each of the poorer members 
of the community enough to pay for a pound of meat, at its 
standard price, when only the three thousand are purchasers. 
What is the inevitable result? TVhv, the moment that the 

■ 

additional two thousand enter the market to purchase meat 
up goes the price, and they are just as far from their supply 
of meat as before, and would be until their purchasing 



21 



power equalled that of the rich, or the supply of meat was 
increased. 

This illustration, the principles of which are taking place 
every day in the economic world, not only shows us the law 
of supply and demand, but also shows us what is the true 
wealth of a country. Labor has generally a very erroneous 
and perverted idea of wealth. It calls it gold, silver, and 
greenbacks. But this is not so. They at best are only a 
symbol of wealth, an evidence of so much labor performed. 
If there are a thousand bushels of corn in a community or a 
country, all the gold and silver in the world would not make 
that thousand bushels of corn any more. If there are a 
thousand bushels of wheat in one balance, in proportion as 
you put in the purchasing power of greenbacks, or paper 
money in the other, up goes the price of wheat, and tons of 
paper money would not add a single grain to the quantity of 
wheat. 

Paper money is comparatively worthless in the cheapness 
of its production. Gold and silver would be worthless if 
they could be obtained on the same conditions. In our 
last war we saw how the increase of paper money made an 
increase of prices without a corresponding addition to 
value. 

Professor Cairns, an English economist, has prepared a 
table in one of his works, by which he shows that since the 
discovery of gold in California and Australia, and its great 
increase in the monetary system of the world, there has been 
a proportionate rise in the prices of all articles of consump- 
tion. Should new mines be discovered, and gold more 
easily obtained than at present, then this rise in prices would 
still more rapidly increase. 

This economic balance is a most delicate one, and will 
weigh to the hundredth part of a grain. In Australia a cer- 
tain kind of boxwood is used, that is brought all the way 



22 



from South America. This same wood grows in abundance 
in the immediate neighborhood, and costs nothing, only, to 
fell it. In the early history of the colony of Virginia that 
State attempted to exclude tobacco in its productions, and 
to encourage manufactures. But tobacco, in spite of all the 
legislation against it, was the master ; and at the beginning 
of the Revolutionary War that colony exported annually a 
million of pounds sterling of tins article, that largely main- 
tained the balance of colonial trade. In our own time, 
wheat is shipped three thousand miles to Europe, while it 
may be sadly wanted in New York or Boston. 

In the great commercial operations and industrial enter- 
prises of the present age we cannot always see the delicacy 
and test the accuracy of this economic science, for want of 
figures and data, but which we believe always exists. It is 
of this force, that will draw a pin around the world, if it is 
for its interest to do so, and will not move a bushel of dia- 
monds a sixteenth part of an inch, unless in obedience to 
some of the laws of its intricate structure, that labor should 
have some knowledge and insight, if we ever expect labor 
to understand its true position and interests in relation to 
capital. And this we think applies with almost equal force 
in the United States as in any other nation. It is true we 
have much teaching in this country, but comparatively little 
real deep and practical instruction. We seem content, in 
an astonishing degree, to glide upon the surface. 

How to increase capital, the dividend of wages, is the 
objective point of all modern civilizations and nations. Cap- 
ital is the all-pervading atmosphere that surrounds the 
economic life. It limits what can live and what must die. 
Does labor or population press hard upon capital, then there 
is suffering, misery, and death. Capital is the parent *of 
industry, and assists in a new distribution of wealth. It 
gives work to the poor, employment to the idle, and makes 



23 



an, increase of population desirable and profitable. When 
capital and labor are mutual in their wants and needs then 
peace, plenty, and happiness abound, so far as the economic 
harmony can produce them. But have they grown out of 
proportion to each other, especially if labor is the larger of 
the two, then there is faction, strife, hunger, and crime. 
The prosperity and advancement of the present social and 
national systems seem closely linked with this increase of 
capital. And especially we of the United States, who claim 
that our civilization is in advance of every other, cannot give 
this part of the subject too much attention. TThen idleness 
and. misfortune are the result of indolence, or a false pride 
and vanity, we certainly can have no sympathy, and can find 
no remedy for such an affliction. But when honest manly and 
womanly labor is forced to idleness because it has outgrown 
capital, and placed itself beyond succor, from this source, 
then we have arrived at a sad condition of economic devel- 
opment. 

Capital is realized either from increase or economy, from 
the positive addition of something to the wealth of the com- 
munity, or a saving in its annual expenditure. Increase 
your means, restrain and reduce your wants, and the result 
in both cases is the same. Although a contraction in the 
economic world may have the effect to do much injury to 
certain industries, yet it is much better that this gradual de- 
cline should come, than a general failure by the individuals 
of a community living beyond their means, or indulging in 
expenses that must end in ruin. 

The people of that nation or country are no doubt the 
most prosperous who are the greatest consumers, and at the 
same time save and amass the greatest amount of capital. 
Such a condition as this in every community must be the 
standard of its national progress and superiority. Tables 
well supplied, houses healthy, agreeable, and pleasant, homes 



24 



with an air of ease, plenty, and comfort, — these bespeak a 
season and a land where sunshine, warmth, and beauty have 
largely entered into the lives of the inhabitants. It is not 
how the few rich of every nation live, but what are the sur- 
roundings and comforts of the laboring classes, that are the 
highest tests of its true prosperity. Expenditure and econ- 
omy are contradictory terms, and, if we can practise only one, 
it is far preferable to be economical. 

That nation is most rapidly gaining wealth, in comparison 
and competition with the increase of the wealth of other 
nations, that is applying the economic forces to the industrial 
pursuits that are of the greatest advantage to her in the 
markets of the world. And here we know there has arisen a 
wide, earnest, and deep conflict of opinion and theory in 
regard to agriculture, manufactures, commerce, protection, 
and free trade. These various industries and national poli- 
cies are advanced and maintained with much zeal and confi- 
dence by their respective partisans that they are the true 
ones ; that in the adoption or rejection of some one of these 
theories lies the prosperity or ruin of the United States. 
Oue party asserts that the greatest and most rapid accumu- 
lation of wealth is in manufactures ; another in agriculture : 
a third in commerce ; a fourth believes in protection ; and a 
fifth sees nothing but failure and ruin outside of free trade. 
But, as a nation cannot adopt and pursue all of these policies, 
it is evident that by many it can be fated only to general 
bankruptcy. 

This industrial and national economic conflict has not con- 
fined itself to the United States alone, but has been agitated, 
discussed, and has divided since the days of the ancient 
republics. Under all kinds of governments and in all cli- 
mates these policies have been advocated ; one of them at one 
time successful, and at another defeated. A dosfinatic as- 
sertion of the claims and advantages of either of these sys- 



25 



terns will -probably never bring the converts of each to think 
more of their opponents or their systems. For the want of 
an all-comprehensive and accurate data, both in the seen 
and the unseen of the economic world, a result will not, 
probably, be soon reached that will admit of no dispute or 
contradiction in these controversies. In them, however, 
so far as they may aid or retard the accumulation of capital, 
may lie an important factor in the solution of the problem of 
"the relation of capital and labor in the United States." 

We believe, in this matter, that the economic forces are 
stronger, and that the economic laws are wiser, than any that 
man can produce. Some writers maintain that in manufac- 
tures is the quickest and surest way to wealth. But this can 
be so only in a relative degree. The industrial balance is 
continually changing. How impossible the practice that all 
nations shall encourage and engage in manufactures. Let 
this be the custom, and it would soon be profitable to culti- 
vate the barren soils of Greenland, and every small patch of 
ground would become a mine of wealth. It is in the har- 
mony of the three great divisions of industrial labor that peace, 
plenty, and prosperity can only be maintained. This division 
cannot now be limited to a single nation, but must be enjoyed 
by all. You can pay no regard to this if you wish, but we 
think there is a greater power than man's puerile weakness 
that is directing the great engineery of life. In nothing 
is this power more signal than in the industrial world. In 
production and in the division and distribution of labor it is 
man's great mission to find out what nature demands of him. 
In proportion as he works in harmony with her, he prospers 
and lives ; as he works against her, does he suffer and die. 

The production of manufactures in the United States in 
1790 has been estimated at twenty millions of dollars. The 
population then was about three millions. The value of the 
productions of manufactures in this country in 1870, making 



26 



an allowance of thirty per cent, for an inflated currency, 
was three and a half billions of dollars, and the population 
was forty millions. In 1790 the value of the production of 
manufactures, per capita, in the United States was six and 
two-thirds dollars; in 1870 it was eighty-seven and a half 
dollars. The policy of the United States between these 
periods has been largely a protective one. Here certainly 
has been comparatively a large and rapid increase in the 
value of manufactures. But, in so far as this industry has 
been increased by protection, we believe that the agri- 
cultural interests and wealth have had to pay for it, to the 
utmost farthing. Agriculture has lost, manufactures 1. 
gained, by protection. The sum that by the policy of 

tecfliaii agriculture has paid for manufacture- is the 
difference in the price it has had to pay for American manu- 

tured goods, and what the same goods could be bought at 
in home markets from foreign manufacturers. Paul 

D paid, but Peter has been robbed. There certainly has 
been a seen gain in the value of manufactures : but has there 
not also, at the same time, been an unseen loss in agri- 
culture 

The national policy of England, in regard to protection 
and free trade, ha^ been a somewhat changeable one. In 
1650, when L g t rivals, the Dutch merchantmen, were 
becoming the common carriers of the merchandise of the 
world. England passed a series of laws known as the Xavi- 
g tioo Acts. These acts were the n: - _:d and severe in 
the interests of the protective policy. That nation wished 
to exclude her Holland competitors from trading in her 
colonial dependencies of America. .ese acts were 

warmly praised by commercial and political writers of the 
time. They were termed the i a charta maritigna. 
But since then the free-trade policy has been adopted by 
that nation. By some it is claimed that the protective 



27 



policy has been the palladium of her commercial prosperity ; 
whije others have been as strong in their assertions and 
testimony that the protective laws brought her to the verge 
of ruin; aud the same regime, continued a few more years, 
would have plunged her into a bloody revolution, civil 
anarchy, and decay. t 

The protective policy, it is claimed by its advocates, 
keeps up the price of wages in the United States. Wages 
certainly have been higher in the United States than in 
England ; but this we do not believe is wholly due to the 
legislation of protection. One of the reasons why wages 
have been higher in this country than in England is in the 
increased demand for labor. But let the national policy 
remain what it now is, for fifty years, we think that 
wages would fall by the inevitable law of supply and 
demand. It is impossible to prevent this result by an 
artificial barrier or protection. It is beyond the power of 
man to resist or control it. But where protection keeps up 
the price of other commodities, as well as that of labor, the 
latter loses nothing by its removal. Wages come down ; 
but in the same ratio the cost of living is lessened. That 
which reduces the cost of what labor uses and consumes, in 
proportion as it reduces its remuneration, is of no disad- 
vantage to labor. 

The national policy may do much to accelerate or retard 
the accumulation of wealth. Whatever does this lies very 
close to this relation between capital and labor. The things 
that legislation can do to aid in the increase of capital are 
very few ; but the things it may do to prevent it are very 
many. 

If one country can manufacture cheaper and better 
articles than another, or all others, then that country ought 
to do it, not only for itself, but all the world. If one 
country can grow wheat cheaper than all others, then it 



should be the world's storehouse for this article, uutil some 
other country can excel it. But. even with free trade, 
England has not banished her pauperism and poor-rates. 
When one in ten of her population is a pauper, and, in hard 
times, one in six has to be assisted, then it would seem that 
this panacea, after a thirty years' trial, will leave much to 
carry on the conflict of capital and labor. 

There is much in this struggle and competition of nations 
to do evervthinsr for themselves and neighbors, that re- 
sembles the selfishness of an avaricious man. He desires to 
grasp everything himself. It pains him to see friend or foe 
pursuing anv successful industrv or business. He has all 
he can do himself? but his greed outruns his judgment. It 
beclouds all his faculties. This might do if man was to live 
like Robinson Crusoe, independent of his fellow-men. But 
1 and nature have decreed a different way. They have 
ordered that there shall be mutual help, assistance, and a 
mutual interchange of benefits and services. Xo nation, at 
the present day, can cut itself off from the rest of the 
world. Isolation is not independence. It is narrow, selfish, 

small. — dwarfing the man or the nation that prac 
If we sell to England, France, or Russia, then there is noth- 
ing more inevitable than that we must boy of them, or give 
them what we produce. In interchange there is profit. 
When the pn -es then the interchange will stop. In 

proportion as other nations are dependent upon us, just in 
such a proportion must we be dependent upon them ; the 
service cannot long be on one side. 

While we believe in protection and prohibition, to limit 
false and extravagant wants, and to correct the perversion 
of capital, yet we do not see why one nation should not par- 
take of the special benefits that nature has made for all 
mankind. While we can understand that the infant cannot 
contend with the £riant, we have vet to be convinced that it 



29 



is cheaper for one nation to produce or manufacture for 
itself what it can buy at a much less cost from others. By 
the protective system the industrial occupations of a nation 
are no doubt multiplied and increased ; but they are weakened 
just in proportion as they are not extended and broadened 
by some other force and interest than a merely artificial one. 
It may do very well to start a man in business who has the 
elements of success ; but to keep one in business, who has 
not the experience, industry, and capacity to sustain him- 
self, is an unprofitable and losing investment. So we think 
it is with protecting an industry by national legislation. We 
believe just in proportion as a nation is producing or manu- 
facturing for itself what it can purchase in another market 
at a cheaper rate, just in such a proportion is it pursuing a 
policy of impoverishment and ruin. 

A great deal has been said in our history about the Amer- 
ican system. By this, as we understand it, America is to 
produce and consume herself. She is to cut all the eco- 
nomic cords by which she is bound to the trade and interests 
of foreign nations. Her wants and needs, and the means 
to satisfy them, are wholly to be found and brought forth 
from her own resources and industry. She desires neither 
to buy nor to sell to neighboring nations. She is young, 
vigorous, and prosperous, and does not wish to unite her 
youthful energies to the age and decrepitude of continental 
countries. But America in time must grow old, in the 
economic sense. She cannot resist age any more than can 
the individual. Her rich and virgin soil will not always 
yield productive crops at so little expense as at present. It 
will soon become worn out in the service, and will not give 
unto man, only what he has first given unto it, to renew and 
strengthen its wasted life. America, with her manifold 
interests, does not show that she is advancing towards that 
happy state of seclusion. With more than five hundred 



30 



millions of her bonds, and other securities and stocks in the 
hands of foreign capitalists, an annual importer to the 
amount of more than a half billion of dollars, her economic 
life seems, as yet, closely connected with that of foreign 
nations. If to live by yourself, and upon yourself, means 
strength and prosperity, then the protective system is the 
true one. 

We do not think, however, it is for a nation to decide by 
any course of arbitrary legislation upon what it has pre- 
judged its interests. It is not for the legislative authority at 
Washington, London, or Paris to announce whether these 
several nations shall be agricultural, commercial, or manufac- 
turing. There is a more wise and comprehensive wisdom 
than man's directing and controlling in this industrial selec- 
tion. It is the economic power that never waits on legisla- 
tures for its instructions or orders. It is, no doubt, a poor 
trade to export wheat in exchange for French feathers and 
India shawls. But if the wives and daughters of the work- 
ingmen of the United States must have extravagant dress 
and useless gewgaws, it is best that they should have them 
as cheap as possible, or there should be a prohibitive tariff 
upon them so high that it would place them above their 
reach. We are not ruined by what we can't afford, but by 
what we think we can. This perversion of wealth is of vital 
importance in the relations of capital and labor in all coun- 
tries ; but it applies with double force in the United States, 
where the natural tendencies to extravagance receive a 
strong impulse in the freedom of the political form. But, 
fortunately, however strong the dose of poison by legisla- 
tion that man may give to the economic life, it in a measure 
carries its own antidote with it. However deep the cut, the 
economic physician is at hand, with soothing medicines, band- 
ages, and ligaments, to heal the wound as far as possible. 

Political economists separate production into two divisions 



31 



or kinds, in its application and use ; the production that is 
immediately absorbed and wasted, and that which turns into 
renewed capital, and becomes the source of other wealth. 
The greater part of the production of a country is annually 
consumed. Much of man's toil necessarily is being de- 
stroyed and wasted while he is engaged in the work of pro- 
duction. The fires of the body must be kept constantly sup- 
plied with fuel, or they go out. Healthy and wholesome 
food means a more efficient force, that has a greater capac- 
ity and endurance for labor. Yet out of the wreck of this 
annual hayoc and destruction man could keep himself in as 
good a condition to perform his labor, indulge in all the 
comforts he now enjoys, and still make larger additions to 
capital, by saying, than are now often realized. 

The amount that a people annually consume, in proportion 
to what they saye in the form of capital or wealth, is yery 
great. England, during more than eight hundred years of 
labor, has only accumulated about thirty billions of dollars. 
Each year she produces more than a third of this amount, so 
that, were it possible for the people to kwe without consum- 
ing, in less than ten years the entire wealth of England 
could be sayed. The wealth of the United States in 1860 
was estimated at about fourteen billions of dollars, and the 
annual production set down at something more than two bil- 
lions, so that once in seyen years the entire wealth of the 
country is produced. In 1870 the yalue of production was 
estimated at seyen billions of dollars, and the wealth of the 
nation set down at twenty-fiye billions. This was a cur- 
rency yaluation, on which some allowance should be made. 
It is by reason of this great annual consumption that nations 
so rapidly recuperate their prosperity after a prolonged and 
destructive war. That which has been destroyed by the 
enemy would soon haye been consumed by the inhabitants, 



32 



had no war existed; — an observation in the economic con- 
ditions first made by John Stuart Mill. 

Economy and saving in the production of capital belong 
to no class or order of the community. Interest or profit, as 
Mr. Senior has justly said, "is the wages of abstinence." 
But who economizes to meet this end ? Who plans or directs 
their life with a view to the general good as well as their own 
comforts and pleasures ? Perhaps seldom the rich and not 
always the poor. Here we think that the two extreme ends 
of society are sadly at fault. 

From not fully comprehending and applying the laws of 
political economy to the practical affairs of life, there has 
grown up a false opinion as to what society can do to assist 
in the advancement and well-being of labor. It has become 
a kind of a settled conviction, in the order of public opinion, 
that the wretchedness, misery, and poverty of the lower and 
working classes is a predestined curse, which we cannot 
escape nor relieve ; that the lowest forms of labor and want 
must often, if not always, go hand in hand ; that industry 
must sometimes starve and die for the need of capital to set 
it in motion. 

The reason is evident. There is much in the present 
order of civilization, in the United States as well as in other 
countries, that is a contradiction and a paradox. There is a 
Utopian spirit abroad that intensely desires to see labor ben- 
efited, and the lower strata of society raised above what it 
has hitherto attained. But if the majority in power and 
wealth have really any strong faith or abiding hope in this 
new condition, they must do something to develop it, besides 
to talk and write about it. They must bring work and sac- 
rifice to the movement, for it will require of each all that can 
be summoned. There is no homely phrase truer in the 
science of political economy than that, M You cannot have 
your cake and eat it." 



33 

We do not deny that there is not much in the relation of 
capital and labor, that is not deep down, and high above our 
heads, in the depth and heighth of the economic forces, which 
we cannot readily understand. But there is also much in it 
that lies at our feet, shrouded in no intricacy, if we will stoop 
down and pick it up. To do this, we must at least bend our 
backs and stoop. 

Pampered self-indulgence is a marked characteristic of the 
age. There seems a total inability to engage in any work 
that does not end in self-enjoyment, vanity, and show. We 
want the prize. We think how noble and beautiful it would 
be to win it in the cause of labor and humanity ; yet we are 
not willing to make any effort in its attainment. Self is the 
most worshipped hero of the age. Self, no doubt, is the 
friend to labor in the motives to the accumulation of capital, 
but, pushed to its utmost limit, it can only exist on a vast strata 
of poverty, misery, and crime. Ancient civilizations prove 
this, as do many of those of Continental Europe. When the 
plough marked the limits of the eternal city there was no 
proud and haughty patrician, no oppressed and degraded 
plebeian. Poor-laws in England were comparatively un- 
known till the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Governor Win- 
throp reprimanded Deputy Governor Dudley for building 
an expensive house at Newton, lest tne example should en- 
courage others of the colony to do the same thing who could 
not so well afford it. Will the social and industrial system of 
the United States pass through the same phases that now 
characterize some of the European systems ? To the observ- 
ant there must be seen an all-prevailing element that is wax- 
ing stronger, and spreading its wings broader, that bears 
directly on this relation of capital and labor in the use of 
capital and application of wealth, which we believe God, in 
his own way and time, will correct, reform, and redress. 

In regard to the use of profit, Mr. Perry, the American 



34 

economist, says : K "Whoever transforms his property into 
capital establishes thereby a permanent fund whence he may 
draw an income and laborer's support in perpetuity ; because 
the capital, though constantly disappearing in production, as 
constantly reappears in products with profits added, — a fact 
which shows the folly of the popular opinion : which regards 
more favorably the man who spends his money freely and 
unproductiyely than the man who, turning his money into 
capital, building a mill, or making some other permanent 
investment, creates by that means a fund in the community 
out of which permanent wages and permanent profits can be 
paid. The strength of the motives to abstinence in any 
country will depend largely upon the character of the gov- 
ernment and the organization of society there."' 

These motives, Mr. Perry thinks, are strongest in the 
United States. But the recent response by the French 
peasant citizens and capitalists, upon the call of France, for a 
government loan amounting nearly to half of the debt of the 
United States, showed that economy and abstinence had been 
practised by that people to no small degree. French bonds 
did not have to seek a foreign market at a depreciated value 
of sixty per cent., as did many of the bonds of the United 
States during the late rebellion. There are, doubtless, many 
motives to save in the United States, that do not exist under 
other forms of government ; but the motives to save seem also 
to promote extravagant expenditure in this country. 

In the use and application of profits to productive and non- 
productive investment lies a great force in the industrial 
world that can revolutionize the present distribution of 
wealth, and remove much that is irritating and antagonistic 
between the different orders of society. It is impossible for 
any one to limit how wealth shall be spent by its possessor : 
but it is in what we term "the abuse of capital," that labor 
has not a groundless cause of complaint against capital. It is 



35 



not within the economic province to consider this view of our 
question, in the relations between capital and labor ; but it 
nevertheless is a vital one. While the non-productive use of 
wealth employs and pays labor, yet it dies with itself. 
There are two forces at work in benefiting labor in capital 
going to productive employments ; the one economic and the 
other moral. 

In the investment of capital to productive industry is a 
way to assist and advance the interests of labor. Does any 
member of society desire to benefit the workingman, let 
him, instead of buying a house that costs a hundred thou- 
sand dollars, take one that costs fifty thousand, and apply 
the other fifty thousand to the employment of producing and 
independent labor. If any rich and humane woman of 
society is grieved at the poverty and distress of the working- 
classes, let her deny herself the purchasing of diamonds 
costing thirty thousand dollars, which to true taste can never 
add to her beauty, and certainly not to her worth, and apply 
it to some productive industry, to increase the demand and 
remuneration of labor. What is the result of this applica- 
tion of wealth at the end of the year ? Why, that the fifty 
thousand and the thirty thousand dollars have each gained 
unto themselves an additional sum, in the form of interest 
and profits, and honest labor has been employed and paid 
in the only way that wealth or capital should ever be applied 
to its maintenance ; in a productive, independent, and honor- 
able industry. More wealth must go to productive industry. 
This is what modern communism demands in an economic 
way in the distribution of property. More from self, show, 
and ostentatious luxury, to the general good and prosperity 
of the community. In this wealth loses not itself but 
gains in a legitimate accumulation. 

But what does the laborer do in this matter of economy 
to produce capital ? Is he entirely without blame ? Cer- 



36 



tainly not. He is often a spendthrift and a prodigal, wast- 
ing his substance in alehouses, beer-shops, and rum-eel: 
consuming it in bad habits that not only make him a physical 
but a moral wreck. In this consideration of our subject, we 
think not only in humanity, but in ju >ome apo 1 . 

should be made for the laborer. "When fail - work is 

done, he is at a loss, often, how and where he shall spend 

evening. As has been said, " Amusement is a Christian 
duty." The workingman has no resources nor mean- be 
obtain the hisrher and more beneficial kind of amusement. 
He is unconsciously drawn into the lower, more ruinous and 
destructive. The laborinsr man does not seek the ale-house 
and the gin-shop from choice, to spend what may remain, or 
the whole of the w f the day. He is forced there, 

from the dearth of a better companionship and a more 
ennobling influence, to hold him up to the instincts and 
imp f his better nature. Then, again, the laborer has 

rheinduceme nve and economize that other cla- 

have. H- nto hi: " Whv, mv miserable, solitarv 

nee put by will never amount to anything. Let me 
drink and be merry, for to-morrow I <LV 

Both in this country and in England the sum annually 
spent by the laboring lasses for alcoholic spirits, tobacco, 
and other articles, that it would be much better for them to 
throw into the fire, is as great as it is sad. In England the 
aver 2 rf the laboring man is twenty-one shilli: 

this eleven shillings and four pence are paid for alcoholic 
spirits and tobacco, and only nine shillings and eight pence 
for all other expenditures. According to the authority of 

while the laboring men of England receive 
than one-third of the total income of that country, yet they 

Dsome two-thirds of the total amount of wines, spi: 
and tobacco. In 18C the laborers of England spent up- 



37 



wards of seventy millions of pounds, almost a half of their 
entire earnings, in these capital and life destroying habits. 

"The amount expended for these products in England at the 
present day we have seen stated at one hundred and twenty- 
five millions of pounds, or between six and seven hundred 
millions of dollars. In this country the amount spent 
annually at the national drinking-cup has been stated as 
being more than six hundred millions of dollars, as in Eng- 
land, about half of the total wages, or income of labor. The 
cost of food in the United States is but a little in excess of 
what it costs to drink alcoholic spirits. This is a sad waste 
of capital by those who need it most, and are importuning 
wealth to supply it. 

It is said there are points at which all sciences touch each 
other. But this science of political economy has strong, 
far-reaching, and magnetic forces. Its arms are long. 
They can almost clasp the universe. They stretch out so as 
to embrace much of the interest, welfare, and happiness of 
the human race. Its presence may not always be seen ; but, 
concealed from common observation, it is sending its life- 
blood through the fibres, tendrils, and branches of the social, 
industrial, and even the religious and economic world, with 
a power and uniformity, but little realized, and not always 
felt or understood. 

By its widespread circulation the emotional man is bound 
to the industrial man. Political economy regards man, we 
may say wholly, as a force in the material world, like the 
stroke of an engine, or the turn of a windlass. There are, 
however, humane relations of capital and labor, of which we 
have spoken, where this machinery connection and adjust- 
ment does not exist ; where the humanity power is greater 
than the economic power. 

Of this humanity relation between capital and labor we 
are indebted to Mr. Brasse for the following signal illustra- 



3S 



tion: At the French exhibition, at Paris, in the summer of 
1867, premiums were offered for examples of the most 
marked si; 58 thai ild be found of the hanuony of cap- 
ital and labor, employer and emplo; Among many 
others, there was a striking illustration, showing that the 
lab< ::ed and held on the same 
condit: - r he turn of a shaft and the stroke of a hammer : 
that the humanity of capital is something in the problem, 
st, m be made so. The most sisiial instance of this 
harmony, there brought to light, was that of Mr. Quitolf, 
rurer of Portland cement Si rtin. When the 
war broke out in Austria his business became seric 
em! ss . and he was on the verse of ruin. On learninsr 
of his unfortunate situation his workmen united to a man in 
labor of helping him out of his difficulties To avert 
impending lumkruptcy they not only readily submitted 
reduction of thirty-three per cent, in their wagi 9, 
all their hard-earned savings into the hazard t- heir 
employer, making themselves the bridge on which he safely 
passed more prosperous times, v\\ shall not have to 
look tar for the r< - s of this action on the part of labor. 
It had been treated, not as a machine, but as flesh and blood. 
Mr. Quitolf had won for himself the grateful devotion of 
knien by the paternal interest he had alw wn 
them. had fin _ r in peace and union. Every 
Sunday, in the summer, Mr. Quitolf had been in the habit of 
g with his workmen, five hundred in number, to an 
island at the mouth of the Oder, where they were ac- - 
tomed to spend the afternoon in singing choral mc - 

What T ~~ nild have been the solution of such a state of fh 
by political economy? At the first reduction of a half of 
one per cent, the workmen would have deserted their 
employer and gone over to his rival. And as to the inv st- 
ment of capital in snch a venture, it could only have been 



39 



obtained on a good and ample security, and that the rate of 
interest would have been in proportion to the insecurity of 
the* loan. In nine cases out of ten, or perhaps in nine hun- 
dred and ninety-nine out of a thousand, the solution by 
political economy would be the right one. 

We have no sovereigns in our political order. But there 
are sovereigns and master powers to which this man is never 
false nor turns traitor, be he workman, laborer, or the 
lowest and humblest of God's creatures. It is the sovereign 
of a noble and Christian humanity, as here displayed. If 
the humanity of the nineteenth century is what it professes 
to be, it should more often be seen acting as mediator 
between capital and labor. There are social and intellectual 
barriers in life, which it is impossible, and it is perhaps 
not desirable, should be thrown down. If, however, the 
social order becomes autocratic and controls the political 
order in the republic, then its rigidness and severity are 
often more strongly enforced than in an empire or a 
monarchy. 

Messrs. Briggs, cooperative colliers in England, are doing 
a most successful work in the cooperation of capital and 
labor, making the stockholders in their business their work- 
men. Where formerlv there were the breaking of machin- 
ery. strikes, riots, drunkenness, and often bloodshed, there 
are now peace, order, and prosperity, mutual esteem, respect, 
and confidence. 

Other corporations and employers, in different parts of the 
world, have been equally successful in the harmonious and 
intelligent understanding that exists between capital and 
labor. At Halifax, Paris, in Germany, and among the slate 
interests of Wales, the cooperation of capital and labor has 
been successfully demonstrated. 

TTe know of no such cooperation, on a large scale, that 
exists in the United States. There was some vears a^o such 



40 



a cooperative system at Troy : but this we understand has 
since been abandoned. One reason for the absence of tins 
cooperation between capital and labor in this country rests 
in the favorable circumstances that labor has hitherto expe- 
rienced here ; many laborers soon becoming small capitalists, 
and in their turn the employers of labor. But as population 
increases, and presses upon the industrial forces for employ- 
ment, the condition of labor in the United States, in the 
future, will tend more towards a European development. 

"We do not say that there are not many valid reasons why 
this cooperation between capital and labor can never become 
a universal system in the relations of these two important 
interests. But some of the arguments brought against it 
should have no place in the discussion of this controversy. 
Many object to it on account of the trouble and annoyance 
it would give to the employer to permit the workmen to 
look over the books, and explain to them the true conditions 
and interests of business, in which labor has a share. This 
is just what labor should understand, and one of the great 
reasons why strikes, riots, and lock-outs occur is because they 
don't understand it. Such an argument as this can only be 
advanced in the general spirit of the selfish indifference and 
exclusiveness of the age. 

"When and where was any great movement accomplished 
but by trouble, patient submission, and heroic sacrifice? 
This problem may be as great as any age or time has been 
called upon to adjust. "We must take care of tins question, or 
it will take care of us. Is it unreasonable that tins suspicious, 
child labor, suspicious because it is ignorant, should not wish 
to understand that it is getting its due ? Once assure it that 
you are treating it fairly and honorably, and it will trust 
you, though you slay it. In Messrs. Briggs' establishment 
this confidence between capital and labor has been secured. 

Political economy, in its highest development, means 



41 



freedom, liberty, and equality. It is always working in 
the interest and realization of these principles. The har- 
mony of this science will sometime be more thoroughly 
comprehended and understood by nations and statesmen 
than at present. The freedom of labor can never be per- 
fect. In the mobility of capital and labor, capital has the 
advantage of labor. Labor has heart, ties of blood, kin- 
dred, country, and locality, that trouble not capital. Capital 
can go from one investment to another, from one part of the 
world to another, comparatively without trouble or diffi- 
culty, in the great work and interest of equalization. But 
labor moves with more pain and slowness. This is fully 
shown in the excellent work by Mr. Brasse on work and 
wages. 

Generally, we are averse to governmental or municipal 
regulations in the interests of the economic forces. But we 
think, in aid of the mobility of labor, much good might be 
accomplished in the establishment of industrial schools and 
colonization societies in every large city, not only of the 
United States, but of the world. They would greatly aid in 
taking labor from where it is not wanted, and sending it 
where there is a demand for it. 

The industrial pursuits can and will regulate themselves. 
But in the United States, where the political form is so 
free, ambition is in danger of being overstimulated. There 
is a strong governmental tendency for labor to enter the 
higher grades of employment and professional life, where 
there is no demand for it. There is the need, but not the 
power. Ninety per cent, of the criminals are men who 
have been brought up to no trade. Industrial schools 
would often open the door to an honest education in labor, 
that would be a boon to a life that often finds itself wrecked 
in the course of its own choosing. It is driven to despair 



42 



from what is false and unfortunate, rather than from what is 
evil or vicious. 

This harmony in the industrial occupations must and 
should be maintained, to avoid the cry of hunger, the moan 
of miser v, and the remorse of wrong-doing. While agri- 
culture cannot extend itself more readily than manufactures 
without capital, yet agricultural occupations can be success- 
fully increased, while those of manufactures and commerce 
have reached their utmost limit not only of capital but of 
population, and both wait for an increase of agricultural 
products before they can move. Workinginen and others 
are drawn into large cities from a wrong impression of their 
advantages and benefits. Once in them, they have no meaus 
to get out, especially if they have families. Often by this 
forced detention and poverty, crime is committed, with equal 
violence to the unfortunate victim as to the peace and inter- 
ests of the Commonwealth. Jails are now as often the 
asylums of misfortune, the refuge of poverty, as the stone 
walls and iron bars to punish what is criminal in man. They 
should be considered as hospitals of economic and mental 
disease. Crime as often needs the physician as the 
prosecutor. Popular opinion is sadly at fault about this 
mobility of labor. It is not limited by green pastures and 
fertile fields, but by capital. You might as well say to labor, 
Go to the moon and cultivate there, as to say to it. Go West, 
or Go South. Even the early settlers of the New World 
had some capital to begin its cultivation. If wheat is burned 
for fuel in the West, and families are starving in Xew York 
or Boston, either there has been a wrong distribution of 
labor, or the highways of the country have been blocked 
by dishonesty, ignorance, and corruption. 

The territory of the United States may be capable of sup- 
porting a population of three hundred millions, and yet not 
be more densely populated than continental Europe. But 



43 



forty millions may press more heavily upon its capital for 
subsistence than would the three hundred millions, when the 
population of the nation shall have reached that limit. 

We believe that such a movement, in the interests of 
the mobility of labor, has been inaugurated in the city 
of Boston. We think that such an organization in every 
large city would do more to settle the question, "How 
shall the country regain its prosperity ? " than many more 
elaborate papers that might be written upon it and plans 
suggested. 

The railways of a country have an important part to per- 
form in the work of distribution. The highest intelligence 
and honesty should be exercised in their management. The 
highways of a nation are its veins of circulation. Are they 
obstructed, then every industry is paralyzed, and ruin 
begins. They should not be controlled by ignorant com- 
binations and irresponsible monopolies. Both capital and 
labor demand of them that integrity that belongs to the gov- 
ernment itself. In 1830 the number of miles of railway 
operated in the United States was thirty. In 1870 there 
were over seventy thousand miles, whose gross earnings 
amounted to $526,419,935. According to Mr. Poor, the 
railways of England pay five per cent, on the capital in- 
vested, while those of the United States pay more than 
ten per cent. If there is any industry that should be oper- 
ated on a minimum of profit, it is that of intercommunica- 
tion of one part of the country with another. If rail- 
ways can be managed better by government than by 
private corporations, then the government should manage 
them. 

Both capital and labor, however, have erroneous opinions 
and judgments as to the functions of governments in the 
conflict of the industrial forces. Governments, no farther 
than they assist in carrying out the purposes and designs of 



4A 



freedom, facility, and harmony in the economic forces, are 
powerless as an infant All the governments in the world 
cannot, of themselves, raise a spear of grass or produce an 
ear of corn. All the exchequers, treasuries, printing pree 
in Christendom cannot create a dollar's worth of value. It 
can use capital in production or distribution only as private 
individuals may use it. It can subsidize steamship and rail- 
way tines. But unless there is a prescribed demand, or 
these steamships can carry merchandise as cheap as those of 
England, France, or Holland, then the steamships will soon 
lie idle in the dock>. and be dismantled at the whar 
The government increases the rate of tax to make up what 
it has lost in the investment. Governments never pay back 
what tl. eive from the people. They spend it. and call 

for more. When there is no cash or assets, it gives notes 
on printed paper, rather than go into bankruptcy. The 
pie of the Uni : J, in national and municipal taxa- 

tion, g the lead of nations in thi> . t. But a 

_ erument can assist labor by keeping its plight 'th ; 

-ound and stable currency and monetary system ; 
being scrupulously honest and thoroughly intelligi 

We fully appreciate the advantages and benefits of educa- 
tion in the elficiency and skill of labor. To this fact, no 
doubt, the labor of the United States owes much of 
improved condition over that of continental Europe. But, 
then, there is a danger of pushing this matter of education 

far beyond the arc of the economic circle. There is a 
limit where education will not improve labor in the attaiu- 

t of an honest living. The first object of labor is to 
earn an honest and independent support. After this, you 
can point as high on the register of civilization as you wish. 
There may be a demand for manual labor, but none for 
intellectual labor. But the intellect, when once cultivated 
and refined, does not take up the tasks of hard toil as 



45 



willingly as when brought up only to such an occupation. 
The statistics at Washington exhibit that labor is improved 
twenty-five per cent, by education. When, however, ed- 
ucated labor is in excess, the economic index will not fail to 
show it. But the great trouble is, that communities and 
nations go on suffering certain economic disorders, when 
they do not understand what afflicts them. Statesmen, 
philanthropists, and politicians apply the wrong remedies, 
that increase, rather than diminish, the disorder. 

Labor is grieved at the injustice and wrong with which it 
feels that capital oppresses it. To defend itself, trade- 
unions have been organized on a large scale in England and 
this country. Fifty years ago in England not a thousand 
laborers belonged to them. At the present day a million 
are pledged in their support and purposes. International 
societies exist in every nation. Some of these societies have 
large sums invested in carrying out their designs. Some 
writers claim that these unions have raised the price of 
wages five per cent, within the last decade. Admitting 
this, the strikes, lock-outs, and forced idleness, they have 
occasioned must have more than offset this advantage, a 
single strike often costing labor alone hundreds of thousands 
of dollars. As organizations of mutual help and assistance 
they serve a good and noble purpose, and have sometimes 
prevented strikes rather than multiplied them. Under intel- 
ligent management and leadership they would be of great 
efficiency to the well-being of labor. But as a means to 
raise the price of wages, and. put more into the laborer's 
pocket than they take out, we think they are helpless and 
pernicious. We do not say, that could labor press capital on 
all sides at the same time, but what capital might be forced 
to yield some of its rate of profits that it now exacts. This 
pressure must be universal, and extend to every part of the 
industrial world. If capital is bearded in one trade or 



46 

locality, then there must be no retere to which it can flee to 
obtain what it claims for itself. Like everything _ien 

there is no longer a demand for capital at a certain rate of 
interest, then it must take a lower rate. 

N apoleon said " that the bank of France was established to 
loan money at four per cent."* There are, however, limits to 
which the utmost concessions must be confined. There are 
minimum rates of interest and profit, below which, capital 
would not seek investment to compensate itself, and the 

onsibilities, toils, and cares of business. But should 
labor ever succeed in driving capital to such a condition, 
where it will not seek investment, then it will simply have 
been its own hangman and destroyer. 

bor has frequently manifested in the United States, and 
in Europe, an antagonism and hatred of machinery, 
would ask it, why it is that the population of England within 
the last three-quarters of a century has been far greater 
than it had p: y been since the Xorman conquest, and 

the increase of wealth still more rapid? Whv jat the 

commerce and trade within the last forty years of three of 
the leading nations of the world, including the United 
risen from five billions of dollars to forty 
bill: i if that the lowest orde: i - can 

now indulge in luxuries, comforts, and conveniences, th: 
king, a hundred years ago. could not bring to his pak 
Why do towns and ci: as by the wave of a magic 

wand? The relation of machinery to population, labor, and 
capital is an important inquiry that we can here only sug- 
Destroy machinery, and labor would suffer as much 

iiy other class of society. Machinery benefits labor in 

first, by accumulating capital for it- 

next, bv diminishing the cost of articles consumed. As the 

economist Bastia: »ys, *" Manual labor is lessened in one 

direction, only to be employed in anothe: The amount 



47 



saved to the buyers by a cheapened production enables them 
to procure other comforts, and thus make a larger and 
increased demand. The standard of labor is not lowered, 
though that of the general well-being of society is raised. 
The labor performed by machinery and steam has been esti- 
mated as high as eight hundred millions of laborers. M. 
Chevalier, of France, calculates that the steam-engines of 
England alone do the work of forty millions of workmen. 
Take machinery out of the world, population would decrease, 
the cost of what we eat and wear would advance, and 
civilization would take a backward course. 

In the decrease of the supply and competition of labor, 
there can be no conflict of opinion as to its effect on the 
price of wages. In this view of the question, public opinion 
and religious sentiment are as yet strongly opposed. It is 
considered as false and groundless ; that God can, and will, 
take care of his own. We do not think that it is a very 
pleasant and satisfactory view to take ; but that population 
in many communities presses heavily upon capital and the 
means of subsistence cannot be denied. From two to three 
millions of paupers in England, apparently, can have no 
part in the industrial system in that country. It is estimated 
that there are three or four millions of forced idle in the 
United States at the present time. This, as Carlyle says, 
"is one of the dismal sciences." 

The world is doing but half its duty when it gives a man a 
loaf of bread. What it should do is to assist him to earn his 
own bread. Public or private charity, except to the sick, 
the lame, the blind, and the helpless, should be abolished, 
and banished out of this and every other country. It injures 
and demoralizes both parties, the giver and the receiver. 
We are not doing our highest duty to carry others' burdens, 
but to help them to carry their own. On this subject of 
over-population, we shall quote John Stuart Mill. He says : 



IS 

r Unhappily, sentimentality, instead of common-sense, is the 
genius that usually presides over the discussions of these sub- 
jects. Wink til growing veness to the hard- 
ships of the poor, and a ready disposition to admit claims 
upon the good offices of other people, there is an all-but- 
universal unwillingness to face the real difficulty of their 
position, or advert at all to the conditions which nature has 
made indispensable to their physical lot. Discussions on 
the conditions of laborers, lamentations over its wretched- 
ness, demmciations of all who are supposed to be inditferent 
to it, projects of one kind and another to improve e in 
no country, and in no time of the world, so rife as at present. 
But there is a tacit agreement to ignore totally the law of 
wages, or dismiss it with an exclamation of 'hard-hearted,' 
' Malthusian : ' as if it were not a hundred times more hard- 
hearted to tell human beings that they may, than that they 
all int- : creatures who are sure 
tu be miserable, and most likely to be depraved." It is not 
genera. 1th that draws the largest number about the 
. but it is poverty, living on the barest means of sub- 
nee, that has the greatest number of mouths to share 
nothing but its hunger and squalor. Capital, however, 
knows no parentage. The world's children, whether rich or 
poor, are all alike to it. Some write: - that there can be 
no such thing as over-population ; that population, whatever 
the rule of its increase, cannot possibly outrun the means of 
subsistence. In one sense this is true : no more can t 
than can find bread. But if there is a perfect balance in the 
_ -t industrial pursuits ; if there is a free mobility of labor ; 
if the various trades, occupations, and profe- .re evenly 

.ibuted in their employiug capacity : if nothing obstrc 
alarms, or intimidates capital, we would ask philanthro} 
and statesmen how, when, or where could th- -id the 

employing resources, to set to work what should remain idle 



49 



in such a condition of economic and industrial development ? 
We recognize that such a state is not probable, and scarcely 
possible. As a last resort, there can be no doubt but what 
the problem will yield to the solution of a decrease of pop- 
ulation in raising the price of wages. 

But there should be no real antagonism between capital 
and labor. Capital is only produced by labor. If there was 
no labor, then there could be no capital. One is helpless 
without the other. Capital, when once accumulated, is the 
employment and support of labor. Does capital suffer, 
then labor is not prosperous. Is capital drawing no interest, 
then labor is earning no wages. Is capital lying idle in vaults, 
then labor is out at the elbow, and looks anxiously around 
for what it can get for dinner. If there is a conflict between 
capital and labor, then it is because labor does not under- 
stand its true interests and relations with capital. The eye- 
lash does not fall more quickly over the pupil, nor the arm 
go more instinctively to the head at the approach of danger, 
than does capital seek shelter and contract itself when there 
is the least movement to injure its security, or threaten its 
protection. At violence it becomes paralyzed, and the more 
labor pursues it with the sword, the swifter it will flee from 
it. Does capital wish to get the best and most effective force 
out of labor in the creation of profits and wealth, it must be 
treated as something more than a machine. 

Opulence and wealth are prone to forget what they owe to 
labor. Let labor cease for twenty-four hours and truly 
would riches take wings. Want would soon be in the best- 
stored larder. In a week your fine marble buildings and lux- 
urious homes would be but charnel-houses. Wealth, rather 
than shunning labor when it meets it, should take off its hat 
to it and thank it for what it enjoys. Labor is the founda- 
tion, capital the edifice. Samson labor may pull down 



50 



the pillars and supports of the social structure, and bring 
ruin to both, but undermost lies labor. 

It may be thought by many that the freedom and equality 
of the political form in the United States will eventually be- 
come a saving power to labor in the triumph of a working- 
man's party ; but we do not think that such will soon be the 
case. Labor, as yet, has not shown the intelligent choice of 
leadership that would save it, or work out its higher re- 
demption and deliverance. This is often shown in the char- 
acter and principles of the candidates it puts upon its tickets, 
and its communistic enunciations. If the laboring men had 
the national policy under their control, they would probably 
adopt such a course as would hasten it to ruin, and operate 
the most severely against their interests and prosperity. It is 
an intelligent power we need to preserve and save us ; not 
ignorant power, however honest and manly. "With the last 
two qualities left out, we have enough of the latter kind of 
power already. 

Many centuries ago, in the history of the Roman common- 
wealth, a large number of the Roman citizens withdrew 
themselves to the Aventine hill in open mutiny to the civil 
order, with swords in their hands, mainly upon the issue of 
capital and labor. Valerius, who was one of the delegates 
sent to them by the Roman Senate to conciliate and address 
them said, "It's the shield you need, and not the sword. " 
This is the spirit of the mottoes that labor should put upon 
its banners, rather than those we often see displayed there. 
It is the guidance of honest and intelligent protection that 
labor needs, rather than the leadership of demagogues, 
which is the surest and most certain way to anarchy and 
destruction. 

A republican form of government is quick in its passions, 
and ambitious of crystallizations, in certain policies that are 
often hard and unjust. It, more than any other form of 



51 



government, must keep itself fresh, healthy, and vigilant to 
its highest life. What is every one's business and interest 
is v under the direction of none. There is no tyranny like 
the tyranny of a majority. In the Eoman world, labor under 
Augustus was more prosperous and contented than in the 
last days of the republic. This has been experienced in 
other nations than Rome. This is the abuse rather than the 
best use of representative government, which, with certain 
restrictions and limitations, we believe will be the govern- 
ment of the future. A workingman, in writing of the late 
strikes and conditions of labor, in what he claims of the ballot 
that should protect it, says, " TTe are sick of this game ; we 
are soul-weary of looking around for sympathy or a spirit 
of justice, and finding none." 

Self-protection, you say, is the first law of nature. True ; 
but do not be too short-sighted as to the means to secure that 
best and most durable protection. Every man is interested 
in the success of every other man. Every community should 
be interested in the prosperity of every other community. 
Somewhere the most opposite parts of society meet in the 
economic balance. The barber and the prince, the street- 
vender and the capitalist, come together here, if nowhere 
else. The most distant nations touch each other in their 
commercial exchanges. 

The economic world moves in a circle. There are no 
squares, angles, or points, at which it reaches its end, and 
flies off into space. If any part of the circle is broken, or its 
life becomes stagnant, then the disease of hard times begins 
and continues, until industrial circulation has again been sent 
through every part of the economic body. Is business dull 
at London and there is a shrinkage of values, then its effect 
extends to New York, San Francisco, Boston, Paris, Berlin, 
Moscow, and Pekin. It is the seen over-production, the un- 
seen idleness ; no employment, no wages, decreased con- 



52 



sumption, no demand. The harmony between the great in- 
dustries has been destroyed. There is no demand for labor 
in manufactures and commerce ; there is capital lying idle 
for investment, and honest hands waiting for something to 
do. These two must combine in agricultural production, to 
quicken and set in motion the other two great industries. 
Agriculture was before manufacture and commerce in the 
order of the industries. It is the fountain-head from which 
the other two gain their vigor and magnitude. The current 
of the channel is low, stagnant, and torpid. You must put 
more water into the source to give it a new impetus and 
force. The machinery has become too cumbrous and ex- 
panded for the motive-power that moves it. 

Our late war may, in part, have been the cause of much 
of our present business depression. The government was a 
large employer of labor and consumer of production. When 
it ended, large numbers of men were thrown suddenly upon 
capital for employment that it had adjusted itself to do 
without. This surplus must be absorbed into new enter- 
prises of agricultural investments. 

But an inflated currency has done more than any other 
one thing to debase, debauch, and demoralize everything. 
"When an increase of currency or the circulating medium is 
attended with a sudden rise in prices, it is an infallible test 
that it does no good to the industry of the country. An 
unlimited paper currency means bankruptcy. It costs little 
or nothing to produce it ; its value depends upon legislative 
enactments. The purchasing power of money depends 
upon its quantity. If it consists of a comparatively worth- 
less substance, then the supply must be limited. If coinage 
is unlimited, then its value will depend upon the cost of 
production of the material in which the monetary article 
consists. Labor should understand that its greatest and 
most vital interests depend upon permanence, stability, and 



53 



confidence, as much as upon justice. These "will carry even 
the most .vicious system and heaviest burden with apparent 
ease ; while the best monetary policies and measures that are 
continually dangling between defeat and success, caught by 
the gills in uncertain life, mean certain death. TTe say this not 
only of the monetary system, but of the political system, in 
the interests and welfare of labor. To change parties or 
administrations is of no benefit to labor only as the change 
will assist in a higher economic prosperity. Confidence is 
the life of capital. Constant agitations and fermentations 
frighten and alarm it. As Lord Mansfield said of the law, 
" It is not more to have it just than to have it certain." 

Inflation is a great wrong ; it is an economic crime to 
labor. It is a revolution in prices, and of itself, in the meas- 
ure of money A'alues. The greater the quantity of a debased 
currency, the more widespread the ruin. Contraction, it is 
true, is also often hard and unjust in the new adjustment. 
When a bankrupt nation enjoys five years of apparent pros- 
perity, it is evident that a state of intensified bankruptcy 
must occur. There is no benefit in increase of prices with 
no corresponding addition to values. 

Mr. TTells has written thoughtful papers on how r the nation 
shall regain its prosperity ; but we hope it will never return to 
prosperity based on the conditions it has experienced since 
1861. TTe think in the relations of money to prosperity, 
values, labor, and population, there is yet much to be 
adjusted, in detail if not in principle. If the monetary sys- 
tem be national or international, then the financial condition 
of a country will depend upon its industrial laws and com- 
mercial exchanges. You are not prosperous because you 
have gold. You have gold because you are prosperous. 
Since the discovery of gold in 1848 trade has risen in a 
proportion of one to eight. 

In no nation, in the ten years from 1861 to 1871, was there 



54 



ever so great a change in the manner of doing busines- 
in the U ; r i '.-_.-■ a fortune witL 

labor or creating any real - after in product] 

tribution. seems to be the great problem of the scheming 
rid. 5] nd worth" — rporations are 

in every town and city. I lan half the amount of the 

national debt has been sunk in wort. ~~rnents within 

years. Knavery and idi seem to 1 

_ ly entered into the commercial and financial 

_ _ -pend the money in extravaga. 

and when the pay-day en tb are sorely troubled and 

perplexed. We are suffering from a d g I of the - 
nomic I :i honest industry, and an honorable integrity. 

The pay-day comes, but our coffers are empty. 

The conditions of capital and labor are governed by the 
same economic laws in this country as everywhere else. 
The superior ad van* g - md prosperity of labor here we 
believe to be largely due to the great natural advant g 
the material wealth we possess over other nations. Our 
liberal and advanced m of education has greatly aided 

in the worth and value of our labor. But unless the higher 
grades of employment are willii ! return to the lower 

it is only a question of time when it will tend in the 
wrong direction. Agriculture has done much for the p: -- 
perity of this country, and it yet has the power to do much 
more for it. if the people will not I _rht of this great 

rce of wealth. In the Roman ^tate. trom the 

civil life of the forum, there were but two honorable 
employments : those of the farm and the camp. The 
comparatively high price of wages in the Unit 
has come from causes that cannot alwa; . The fresh- 

- . vitality, an _ t of the morning must give way to 
the heat of the noon-day, the twilight, and sL - of the 

evening. We must live on the interest and not the capital 



DD 



of our national, material wealth, if we would not have it 
vanish. The nation enters upon the second century of its 
existence, but with as much need of all that is heroic, 
humane, intelligent, and conciliatory, as it did upon its first. 
It is often more difficult to retain than to win. It seems to 
us that the recent strikes have proved that the political form 
of this country will not bear the pressure of some of the 
European orders. Perhaps it is well that it should not. 

The immediate cause of the open conflict between capital 
and labor, so far as it applies to labor, comes from the igno- 
rance of labor. There is a misunderstanding 1 between these 
two interests ; capital will not always understand labor, and 
labor cannot understand capital. Labor sins more through 
ignorance than intention ; therefore a court having the confi- 
dence of capital and labor, rightly and intelligently admin- 
istered, would be an efficient means, often, to adjust amicably 
the disputes and grievances of both. A court of this kind 
has been Ions: established in France. Lord Brougham stated 
in Parliament, in 1859, that of twenty-eight thousand cases 
submitted to the Conseils des Prudhommes, twenty-six 
thousand eight hundred of them were settled without appeal. 
The science of political economy should become a popular 
branch of education in our schools. All classes of society 
should take more interest in it. It will help them to under- 
stand the wants, needs, and hardships of each other. It 
will bring them nearer together in thought, if not in personal 
relation. We do not live here as though we thoua-ht the 
class distinction was to disappear in the hereafter. Only 
by production or spoliation can property be obtained. Cer- 
tainly, labor is not going to choose spoliation. Should it 
madlv do so, then chaos has come ao-ain. The ballot-box 
will be thrown aside for the bayonet. The sword will be both 
our destroyer and our master. 

It is hardly necessary to remind the labor of the L^nited 



56 



States how much better it is paid and tares here, than in 

st her nations. Ir. _ :id the average w _ 9 f labor 

is not more than fifty cents per day. Nineteen pounds 

the av _ yearly income of the workiinrrnan to 

support himself and a family of live. In France. Switzer- 

oany, and Austria it is not much better. Woman 

in the industrial conditions of thes - »ecupies a 

different place than she does in the United States. In 

nee out of 19,585, 1 5 jrieultural laborers, 
are females. Labor must be more content to dress and 

•rding to its circumstance It should 

not try to pattern the w - I expenditures of those who are 
thy. It should cut the acquaintance of fashion, which. 
at best, is but the rule of the "cap and the bells." 

Our sub' .ds in every direction. We can but par- 

tially and discon: y follow it in some, and must 

r in silence many other >. N thing original can be said 
on this - A ~ an but make new combinations 

Id material : set in motion what should know no r 
bring into the light what should never sink into the shade. 
To think that we could write a paper that would adjust all 
the difficult complications between capital and labor in the 
United States, would be only to prove how little we com; 
hended the gr sa of our task. We can only s __ si the 

ways by which we think some of its grating and irritation 
be lessened. Wealth is - - Ily the motive-power of 

the civilizations of the nineteenth century. Capital has out- 
grown its economic weight and province. It now reaches 
lea from which it hitherto has been excluded. To be rich, 
now. means to be the r be sa r of much more than niOL 
Trade is no longer a reproach : social -irion or 

We have spoken of the economic and humane relations of 

vo great in: ei sta >\ta[ and labor. In the 

economic, it is a strife of capital and labor ; here we think 



57 



that labor is greatly in error. In the humane or social 
consideration it is one order of society arrayed against the 
other for mastery. Here we think that capital must bear 
much blame. The church, that should do away with the 
class-line of rich and poor, often only seems to bring it out in 
stronger contrast, by placing itself beyond the reach of the 
poor. Labor knows where it is wanted. As was once re- 
marked by a foreign envoy : " Where do your poor, the 
laboring men, go to church in the United States ; or have 
you none ? " 

Pistribution seems a more difficult question than produc- 
tion. An increased motive-power in the work of produc- 
tion can easily be supplied ; but to find new markets in 
different parts of the world, new demands for what we 
produce, seems more complicated and difficult. These can 
only be made by industry, enterprise, cheapness in produc- 
tion, without lowering the standard quality. Trade must be 
made successful in honorable competition ; whatever ob- 
structs legitimate and healthy life in the economic forces 
and interests should be studiously avoided. 

We sadly need in the United States more conscientious, 
independent, and intelligent labor. There is a dearth of 
this in our political and national councils. We are the most 
independent and dependent of nations. We look rather to 
our neighbors for approval than to our conscience. Never 
did imposture seem more frequent than at the present time, 
never were palaver and falsity so frequently to be found in 
high places. Tricksters and mountebanks seem to be at a 
premium. How to catch a vote is the purpose for which we 
trim our political sails to take every breeze from whatever 
quarter it may come. The dollar purifies all means by 
which it is obtained, however vile or base. We make 
drunk that we may destroy. We are dying of fawning 
flunkeyism and the flattery of the parasite. The man who 



58 



is not true to himself will not be true to any party or inter- 
est long. The people of the republic, like the king of the 
monarchy, are not always right, and can do wrong. If they 
err not in the heart, they may in head and passion. Labor 
must be able to separate the false from the true, the dross from 
the gold. When its hero comes, it must know and honor 
him. In thought, it wants not the kid-glove dalliance of an 
artificial manhood or womanhood. It needs the warm, true, 
and flesh-like grasp of a Ruskin or a Carlyle : that while it 
hold- it as a unit in the social, law-abiding order, yet fully 
appreciates its misfortunes and hardships, and lies close to its 
restless longing- and anxious striving-. Our best life is 
not dead, but Bleeping. 

But with both capital and labor a gracious Providence 
metes out and award- it- blessi ga with a more even hand 
than is generally BUpposed. In honorable and independent 
tabor is man's brightest happiness : capital treads upon thorns 
that labor know- not of. Social forms of caste, based upon 
indolent wealth, is false in every particular. It carries its 
own curse with it. Manly labor is a sweet sauce, that can 
never come to pampered appetites of indolence and luxury. 
To work for something besides self is man's noblest mission. 
We are restless and discontented for what when gained 
brings us no peace or happiness. Our burdens are heavy, 
onlv because we have never borne the weiffht of others. 

Our sympathies are with labor. As Mr. Harrison justly 
-ays, "They know by hourly experience, they only know, 
what social suffering exists. By sufferinof, their social svin- 
pathies are stimulated; by necessity, their practical instincts 
are developed. They are free from the restless egoism 
which is the misfortune of all who accumulate wealth ; from 
the self-indulgent indecision which is the curse of all who live 
in idleness. Theirs is the highest form of sympathy, theirs 
the readiest powers of action." 



59 



For Mr. Harrison's word " all " we would substitute the 
w;ord " man}' ; " for certainly capital and wealth are often to 
be found with a Christian, tender humanity for misfortune, 
sorrow, and hardship. Poverty suddenly grown rich gener- 
ally makes the severest taskmaster to labor. Labor should 
grant to capital what it claims for itself. The wealthy man 
draws a large income in interest from capital. This he has 
earned, or it has come to him by gift or inheritance. Does 
not labor as well as capital defend its own if there is any 
attempt to take from it by force what it has justly earned? 
We think it would . In fact, labcr goes to unwarrantable 
lengths in destroying work th at has not come within the 
rules of its trade-unions. 

Work ! work honestly and faithfully ! Work at what you 
can, if not at what yo u would. Take the way nearest your 
feet, though hard and stony. After a season of worthy toil 
you may climb glorious heights, such as your most sanguine 
ambition never hoped to see or realize. Look up. As 
Emerson says, " Harness your wagon to a star." Lift your- 
self above your daily drudgery when it is over. There is 
nothing to prevent the laboring man from being a prince in 
thought and feeling, though a prince in station may be a 
brute. "Seek the approval of a clear, manly and womanly 
conscience, rather than what is often the fickle praise and 
uncertain censure of public opinion. Do right. Let the 
world pass on the other side if it will. 

At best, there are many undeserved misfortunes, calling for 
the strength and support of all that is humane ; difficult- 
problems, that stare at us with the Sphinx's impenetrability, 
when approached, even, by the combined action of all that is 
high and thoughtful. Labor must not lay to capital the 
fate that Providence has decreed it in the world. That social 
or religious order that shall absorb labor, the lower and mid- 
dling classes, into itself, we think is assured the triumph of 



60 



the future. The triumph will be deserved. It will be the 
success of the broadest humanity, and the highest element of 
a true Christianity, whatever be its covenant or creed. In 
the inequality of fortune, this all-pervading and Christian 
sentiment, if such can be attained, seems the only means of 
uniting all classes and conditions in a bond of peace, union, 
and harmony. 

Let us not forget, that in whatever capacity we are called 
upon to act, either as capitalist or laborer, rich or poor, there 
seems but one universal allotment in which we all have our 
share, — sorrow, disappointment, and sacrifice; trusting in 
that sphere beyond the sight of mortal vision to right what 
here has been wrong, to redress what has been grievous, to 
reward us for the undeserved burdens we have here patiently 
borne. 



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